


Love and Other Phantom Limbs

by ceywoozle



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cats, Domestic, Established Relationship, Fluff, Gen, like the fluffiest thing ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-06
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2018-01-23 18:35:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1575437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceywoozle/pseuds/ceywoozle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock brings home a cat one day. It's not quite what John expects.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and Other Phantom Limbs

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Cartopathy for giving me a title to this thing, and Belle for adoring it unrepentantly.

_“How do you feel about cats?”_

John remembers these words. Like a death knell in his head. He had visions of sleek orange tabbies, long-coated and soft. He imagined a temperamental tortie, it's face split into a puzzle of conflicting pieces, beautiful and filled with purrs, except when it was not. He pictured something small and black, darting joyfully out of corners and leaping off of walls and into laps.

John likes cats. He likes their difficulty, their individuality, the way they make no apologies. He likes that they do what they want and their self-sufficiency and the way that they will pretend to the last that they don't need or want you, even as they drape themselves purring over your shoulder and demand with accusing eyes why you're late for dinner. He loves being needed, and not needed. He loves being wanted without having to be told that he is necessary.

John loves cats.

He's always assumed that this is why he loves Sherlock, as well.

Now, standing in the middle of the sitting room, he looks at the bundle of patched and broken fur and skin and bone wrapped in Sherlock's coat and he has no idea what to say.

“Jesus Christ.”

Sherlock gives him a withering look. “Don't be ridiculous, John. It's a cat.”

“Is it?” John says weakly.

Sherlock glares at him and moves a fold of coat aside to reveal a pink nose and two huge yellow eyes in a scarred and hollow face.

“Jesus Christ,” John says again, but he's already melted. It doesn't really take very much. He walks forward and gently, oh so gently, pries the frail bundle from the folds of Sherlock's coat. The fur is thick and matted and filthy. He feels flea dirt under his fingers, shudders as the tiny insects move frantically under his hands and there is the sudden pinch as one bites him.

“Jesus,” he says again.

He feels the prominent jut of its spine, the skin hanging loose over the hollow places between its bones. Its right hind leg hangs awkwardly and it hisses weakly and starts to growl low in its throat as John moves to try and support it.

It's a brown tabby, or it might be under all the filth. Its left ear is torn and the right one almost gone. Its tail is clumped and bald in patches and its face is a map of old scars and new.

“Jesus,” he says again, because he doesn't know what else to say.

“We're not naming it _Jesus,”_ Sherlock says.

John ignores him. “He needs a vet, Sherlock. Why did you bring him here?”

“You're a doctor.”

“Not that kind of a doctor.”

It's a Friday afternoon and the vet clinic is packed. Two golden retrievers on a connected leash pant at the doorway and John has to wait for the owner to wrestle them away before they can enter. Some small breed of loud, angry dog yips annoyingly on a woman's lap and there are at least four carriers, one of which emits a steady stream of long loud miserable meows from its shadowy depths. When John reaches the desk, the slightly frazzled looking receptionist gives him a sceptical look that shouts louder than words that he must be joking, but when John reveals the broken down tabby in the folds of the old towel her face immediately softens and she gives a small cry. “What happened?” She reaches an instinctive hand out towards it and it gives a menacing growl in the back of its throat.

“My husband found him,” John says, pulling the bundle out of swatting range while Sherlock idles along the wall, reading the labels on the food packing.

“Did you want to euthanise him?” she asks, and John knows she means it kindly but he balks at the suggestion nonetheless, giving her a look that has her flushing to the roots of her very red hair.

“Not particularly,” he says and doesn't even bother trying to keep the judgement out of his voice.

She gives him a tight, apologetic smile and backs towards the door leading to the rear of the clinic. “I'll just see where we can fit you in.”

He retreats to the bench near the door, beside a woman with carrier who gives him a kind look as she moves over to make room for him. He thanks her and sits, watching Sherlock critically perusing the ingredient list on the back of a food package. John can see the scornful disapproval in the disdainful line of his shoulders and he mentally prepares himself for ongoing experiments involving raw meat and thiamine for the foreseeable future.

The receptionist returns and John catches her quick smile before she comes out from behind her desk with paperwork and a pen, and John fills it out awkwardly, one-handed, cradling the cat who has started a constant warning rumble that vibrates along John's arm and through his thighs, where he holds it on his lap. Sherlock ignores him, though he's put the food back and is now carefully inspecting the posters along the wall, advertising flea treatment and heart worm medication and one large one with seventy different dog breeds displayed laterally in seven neat rows.

When he's done, leaving blank where it asks about age and name and medical history, he casts Sherlock a perfunctory glare where he's staring intently at the dog breeds on the wall, utterly ignoring John as he struggles to balance everything as he gets to his feet. It's the woman beside him, a neurotic looking Bengal in her carrier, who gives him a kind smile and offers to take the paperwork back to the desk, and he thanks her kindness with a tight smile and an eye roll at Sherlock's back.

It take only five minutes for a vet to emerge from the back door and after a quick conversation with the receptionist and the collection of the new file, she comes over to him with a sympathetic smile and he smiles back, liking her immediately.

“Dr Watson, is it? I'm Dr Macgregor. Come on back and we'll have a look at what we can do.”

John calls to Sherlock and they follow her to the first examination room. She closes the door while John carefully lowers the bundled cat to the steel surface of the table.

She is gentle and efficient, palpating with careful competence at its abdomen and checking under its ragged tail, running a quick hand down its back and placing the stethoscope carefully, listening to heart and lungs. She shines a light into its eyes and ears and inspects its mouth and thyroid glands with matter of fact care. She pinches the skin between its shoulder blades and they all watch it tent, the slowness with which it once more subsides.

The cat is silent throughout, glaring fiercely but clearly unable to muster the energy to do anything about these indignities. It lets them happen and John can feel his heart breaking a little bit. He remembers the suggestion of euthanasia and he mentally rebels against it all over again.

“Where did you say you found him?” Dr Macgregor asks.

John looks to Sherlock, who is watching the vet with an expression that John knows all too well and he inwardly sighs at the impending deduction, already preparing himself for the placating conversation with the clinic manager and possibly the police.

But after a pause, Sherlock only blinks, frowning slightly between his eyes and looks down at the broken animal dying slowly on the metal table. “Um, where? Oh. Uh, Soho. Behind a restaurant.” He glances down at John. “The severed head in the bakery freezer,” he explains for reference and John remembers that morning's phone call as he had been getting ready to board the plane in Dublin to fly back home. Mike, hearing his sudden outburst of _“don't bring it home!”_ had given him a knowing grin.

Now, the vet gives them a strange look and John smiles at her in a way he hopes is disarming. “Um. Detective. Sort of. So. Cat?”

She shakes her head as if trying to clear it and gives him an uncertain smile. “Yes. Of course. Well, it's male. Hard to tell but judging by its teeth probably around four or five years old. Leg is definitely broken. I don't want to fiddle with it too much given that he's probably in a lot of pain. I'd like to take him back, get some blood work done. If we send it out stat we'll hear back from the lab within the hour and we can start by sedating him and doing a full set of xrays. Also, there's a good chance he's anaemic given the magnitude of the flea infestation and he's clearly malnourished and dehydrated. He has a nice case of ear mites, as well. Those are easily enough taken care of with a spot-on flea treatment. Overall, I'd say it's lucky you found him Mr Watson,” she says looking earnestly at Sherlock. “He wouldn't have lasted another day like this.”

John almost sputters with laughter. Normally it's him that's called Mr Holmes, something that never fails to annoy him. This time it's Sherlock's turn to look indignant, his lips turning down and the frown deepening between his eyes.

“It's Mr Holmes,” he bites off.

“Oh,” she says, and then something seems to settle because her eyes widen and she says again, “Oh! Mr Holmes. Dr Watson. Of course. My apologies.”

Sherlock looks both pleased and annoyed and John wants to laugh again, watching this constant struggle between expecting and resenting the recognition. _Exactly like a cat,_ he thinks with a smirk.

Sherlock shoots him a glare, and John knows that nothing about his thoughts are in any way a secret.

“So,” he says quickly, turning back to Dr Macgregor. “Do we sign something?”

It takes ten minutes for the paperwork to be printed off and gone through. Sherlock watches silently while John goes over the list of procedures, the proposed cost of each medication and the staggering total at the end. But he's a doctor and he's seen the bills that come through the clinics and hospitals he's worked at, so he knows how much these seemingly simple things can cost in medication alone, never mind the operating costs such as wages, lab costs, clinic maintenance, equipment wear and maintenance, simple supplies like needles and sample containers and isopropyl alcohol. It still hurts when he signs his name at the bottom, however, especially knowing that this doesn't include the inevitable surgery once the leg is assessed.

“Do we have your number?” Dr Macgregor asks as he returns the paper to her hand. “We'll call you when we have the results and we know exactly what we're up against.”

“Yeah, it should be in the file—”

Sherlock interrupts. “We'll stay,” he says, and John and the vet both stare at him.

“It's, well, it could be a while. An hour and a half at the least.”

“Fine,” Sherlock says. “We'll wait.”

John looks at him, trying to figure out what this is about, but it doesn't really take very long for him to catch up. He thinks of every hospital and clinic they've ever been to. St Bart's leading to the jump. The clinic John worked at, the one place he wouldn't allow Sherlock to follow. The time he got shot, before they were married, and it had taken the combined powers of Mycroft and Lestrade to get Sherlock through to see him. That had been the deciding factor. Two days after John had been released, Sherlock had bundled him wordlessly into a cab and manhandled him in front of the closest minister he could find.

So John smiles, probably far too softly, because he sees Sherlock flush self-consciously, and he nods. “Yeah, we'll wait,” he says.

Dr Macgregor carefully collects the various ends of the towel and picks the cat up, and with a last smile she disappears into the back and John and Sherlock return to the waiting room. The woman with the neurotic Bengal has gone and they sit squeezed together on the bench, John taking the side that puts him next to a man with tall black dog of indeterminate breed that is happily panting with his head in his owner's lap.

“I hope you've got some high profile cases lined up for the next little while,” John murmurs.

Sherlock glances at him. “It'll be fine.”

“You know that didn't include the cost of the surgery. And if the blood work doesn't come back clean?”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “You worry too much.”

“Maybe you don't worry enough, hm? Ever think that that may be the problem, instead of me?”

Sherlock raises a supercilious eyebrow and says nothing.

It's a long wait. It doesn't take long before Sherlock retreats into his Mind Palace and John is left to lean himself against him. When he does, the long black-clad arm beside him raises, a gesture utterly unconscious as Sherlock doesn't even open his eyes. It's purely automatic and John doesn't much like affectionate displays in public. He's about to lean back on the bench, about to reach over and settled Sherlock's arm back down again, but the man with the dog glances at them, a horrified look on his face and without even a second thought John burrows himself under the offered arm. He feels it fall down around him, draping warm and heavy over his shoulders. He smiles, not at all friendly, and the man looks quickly away.

He dozes, unintentionally. He doesn't even realise he's done it until he feels the slight pressure on the top of his head and Sherlock's voice rumbling next to his ear.

“John, wake up.”

He starts, forgetting for a second where he is. But Sherlock is looking at him with something like amazed affection and John understands it, because he's never done this in public before and he feels simultaneously guilty and embarrassed.

The clinic has emptied somewhat, only two people left, a teenaged boy with a rabbit and an old man with a cat on a leash that looks at least as old as he is. Behind the desk, the red-headed receptionist is still there and Dr Macgregor is standing patiently before them where they sit on the bench. Everyone is looking at them and trying not to smile.

“Shit,” John says. “Sorry, Sherlock.”

Sherlock hums wordlessly and presses a kiss against John's temple and John knows he is doing it purely to embarrass him further.

“So, the cat?” he asks determinedly, feeling the flush rising up to his face.

Dr Macgregor stifles her grin. “Erm. Yes, sorry. Would you like to come into the room again?”

They follow her back into the same room where she pulls the digital xrays up on the computer screen and John knows at once that they're in trouble.

“Shit,” he says.

She gives him a glance. “It's quite bad.”

Sherlock is peering closely at the screen and John sees it on his face when he realises what their only option is.

“Can we keep the leg after you remove it?” he asks.

 

* * * * *

 

The cab ride home is almost typically quiet. Sherlock is lost somewhere in his head, probably already conducting experiments on the spare limb in his mind. John is watching London slide by, feeling the hard edges of the bones in Sherlock's fingers, twisted up with his on the seat.

“I'd like to name him,” Sherlock says, when they're five blocks away from Baker Street.

John, drifting on the comfortable silence inside the cab, starts a bit at the sudden intrusion of Sherlock's voice.

“What did you have in mind?” he asks.

“Not sure yet.”

“Okay. But...nothing ridiculous, yeah? And please don't name it Mycroft.”

Sherlock gives him a horrified look. “Why would I name a cat Mycroft?”

“I don't know. To annoy him?”

“I would never do that to a cat. Especially not our cat. Our cat is special, John.”

“Sorry, sorry. Didn't mean to insult the cat.”

Sherlock glares at him for a moment longer before making a huffing noise and turning away. Silently, John squeezes his fingers and moment later he feels Sherlock squeeze back.

 

* * * * *

 

Sherlock spends the next two days on the computer. He is researching holistic butchers and organic vitamins, muttering internal debates on the merits of filtered water versus tap. There are charts carefully sketching out the nutritional pros and cons of chicken versus beef versus wild boar, and a long list of nutrients that John knows is going to be his job to hunt down and procure, retinol and taurine and arginine and thiamine. He finds a printed sheaf of papers with information on the pH balance of the urine and the prevention and occurrence of bladder stone and urinary blockages in male cats. A second stack, half an inch high, is a collection of accounts and diary entries from other cat owners, all with cats who have undergone some kind of amputation.

John reads through some of them, but the amount of material Sherlock has accumulated is staggering in its detail and quantity. John remembers the cat that he had tried to adopt when he was young, a small female that he left scraps of cold meat and milk out for in the small alley between their building and the next. That was before his father had found out, bursting unexpectedly one day into the narrow space, fists already swinging. He had aimed for the cat first but John had gotten in the way and afterwards he had listened to it mewling through the crack in his bedroom window for three days before it had finally stopped coming back.

This is a far cry from cold scraps and milk, and John feels something warm and aching in his chest when he looks at Sherlock, sprawled on the sofa with the laptop on his thighs, and he can't help himself when he goes to him, sinking into the narrow space at his side and nuzzling his face into the crook of his neck.

“Hmm,” Sherlock says, rubbing a smooth cheek against him without looking away from the screen.

John doesn't say anything, just closes his eyes against the familiar smell of too much tea and expensive shampoo and lets the warmth of the man beside him sink into his bones.

 

* * * * *

 

The cat comes home three days later. They go together to the vet to pick him up and are brought to an exam room to wait for five minutes before Dr Macgregor enters with an unreognisable bundle wrapped in a clean towel in her arms.

The cat has been shaved down so that only tufts of fur around his feet and his head are left, and the fur there has been combed free of the tangles and worst of the filth. The old wounds and flea bites are startlingly visible and there are bald patches where the hair has fallen out. They look pink and painful, and it's frightening how thin the animal is. The place where his leg was, the right hind, looks incongruously empty, the bandages removed and the line of surgical staples creating a long ugly mark across its body.

And John the doctor notices these things, take every scar and flea bite into account. But the part of him that had fed that cat beside his old flat for three short weeks sees the stumped ears held high on its head, the bright yellow eyes peering out of an alert face, the way the scarred tail already lashes in steady warning. He is smiling without even noticing it.

Dr Macgregor is talking, a comprehensive set of instructions outlining wound care and restrictions. John doesn't care. He isn't listening. He is staring at the cat, this other life, and he realises for the first time that it's theirs.

 

* * * * *

 

They send them home with a collar, a plastic Elizabethan cone that Sherlock eyes with disdain.

“It looks ridiculous,” he says, as John puts it on.

John ignores him, presses the velcro pads together. The cat stares at him, wide yellow eyes silently judging.

“It hates it,” Sherlock says. “Look at him. He hates it. He'll associate you with it now and will hate you, too.”

John sighs. “Tea?” he asks, struggling to his feet. The cat is sitting awkwardly in the soft, round bed he had bought for it yesterday. It's hips are canted at a strange angle, trying to adjust to the sensation of its missing limb.

Sherlock glares at him, kneeling beside the bed, and for a moment John has two sets of wide, accusing eyes levelled at him and he's not sure if he should shiver or laugh.

“Do you want tea?” he repeats in some exasperation.

“Fine,” Sherlock snaps, and John sighs again.

When he returns from the kitchen, two mugs in hand, it's to find the cat hissing and swatting angrily as Sherlock struggles to work the collar back over its head.

He stops to watch, amused and vexed, until Sherlock notices him.

“Idiot animal was licking the wound,” he snaps.

John presses his lips together and says nothing, putting the mugs down on the table and grabbing the towel slung over the back of a chair. The cat screams indignantly, a terrifying sound filled with pure indignant rage that has them both flinching back involuntarily. It takes three full minutes to wrap the lashing cat into the folds of the towel, but once the paws are contained with John practically lying fully on top of the outraged animal, Sherlock places the collar back on, nearly getting his thumb caught between furiously gnashing teeth. John releases it, managing to catch the edge of a livid paw, and the fact that the clinic had clipped his claws during surgery is the only reason he still has a hand left.

With a final screech the cat rockets off, the plastic collar banging into furniture and catching at the rug. It seems to John that it has no problem with its sudden loss of limb at all.

They watch it vanish into the kitchen and the scrape of a hard plastic edge on a linoleum floor tells of its passage through into the hallway and a moment later the clip of the bedroom door hitting the wall reaches them.

“He's supposed to stay quiet with limited motion,” Sherlock says.

John gives him a look. “Would it kill you to listen to me for once?”

“It might,” Sherlock says. “No way to tell.”

John glares at him, but it falls flat because he's trying hard not to laugh and he sees the muscle twitching in Sherlock left cheek that signals the beginning of a grin.

“Idiot,” he says far more fondly than he means to, and leans over and kisses those grinning lips.

 

* * * * *

 

It's two weeks before the cat comes out of hiding. At one thirty on a Wednesday afternoon, John leaves the house for the shops. He leaves Sherlock ensconced on the sofa with his hands steepled at his lips, his eyes closed. The cat is sprawled unmoving under the bed, blinking large eyes at John when he had peers under it to the make sure it's still there.

When John returns at two fifteen, Sherlock is still on the sofa, but now the cat is, as well, curled into a tight ball in the dip of Sherlock's chest. John has to stop and stare for a moment, arms laden, the plastic handles digging into his hands, because it's so unexpected.

“Sherlock?”

Sherlock doesn't move. There is a strange grinding sound being emitted, however, and curiously, John drops the bags and walks slowly closer. The cat's eyes slit open and John moves carefully, his hand out and ready to be sniffed. It's only when he's in reaching distance, the cat thrusting a regal nose out to inspect the proffered hand, that John realises that the harsh grinding sound is its purr.

“Good lord,” he says.

Sherlock's eyes crack open, watching the exchange happening on his chest. “I'm afraid to move,” he admits.

“You think he'll scratch?”

“I don't want to scare him.”

John smiles, a wide, amazed grin because the cat— _their_ cat—is perched on Sherlock's chest and actually purring.

“You'll have to move eventually,” he says.

Sherlock glares at him and doesn't answer.

The cat is butting at John's outstretched fingers with his head and John feels soft, clean fur on the back of his hand. Already the cat looks better, it's fur beginning to grow back in, short and fluffy and fine. It's spine is no longer protruding and muscle and fat are starting to build where once had only been hollows and caved in skin. The flea bites have disappeared and the bald patches have scabbed over and John can see where the fur is beginning to reemerge around their edges. It's not exactly the picture of health, with the silvered scars that won't ever go away and where the fur won't grow back, the ears stumped and tattered, its leg completely missing, but he can see how one day it might come somewhere close.

“He's beautiful,” he says, surprising himself, and he sees Sherlock's eyes slide over to him and stay.

“Yes,” Sherlock says. “He is.”

The cat doesn't move for half an hour. John puts the groceries away, puts the kettle on. He presses the button to reheat the water three times before there is the sound of a quiet thump from the sitting room and John looks in to see the cat grooming itself in the single patch of sunlight in the middle of the floor and Sherlock is pulling himself to his feet.

“Tea?” he asks, though he knows the answer, simply needs to say something because there's something in his chest that's struggling to break out and he doesn't know what it is.

Sherlock gives him a thoughtful look. “Yes. Did you remember to buy the whole duck for John?”

John pauses, wrinkling his brow. There was something strange about that sentence. “Sorry, for who?”

“For John. Cat John. I'm naming the cat 'John'.”

John stares at him. “I'm sorry, you're what?”

Sherlock sighs. “Don't be obtuse. You heard me.”

“I thought I heard you say you're naming the cat 'John' but I figured I must have misheard or gone temporarily insane.”

Sherlock gives him a look, the one that says _Stop thinking you're funny when you're really just an idiot, John,_ and John feels the need to throw a cup at it.

“You're not naming the cat 'John'.”

“I just said I was. You need to pay attention, John.”

“Stop saying 'John'!”

“It's your name! And the cat's! I'm going to have to say John eventually!”

“You're not giving the bloody cat my name, Sherlock.”

“You're just jealous because he came to me first.”

“Then how about we name it 'Sherlock'!”

“Don't be an idiot. That's not a cat name.”

“Neither is John!”

“Of course it is. It's our cat's name. Really, John, you can't be this stupid.”

John stands in the kitchen and stares at him, debating his choices. It barely takes a second for him to realise he has none. “Fine,” he says, and goes back to the kettle. He doesn't make tea for Sherlock.

“Don't be childish,” Sherlock says when John walks past with his cup, and John ignores him, settling into his chair with his book.

Sherlock sulks for the rest of the afternoon and at dinner he refuses to eat. John feeds the cat, unwrapping one of the carefully sealed meals from the refrigerator, a mix of various raw meats, bones and organs included, ground finely and mixed with a composition of vitamins and added nutrients that Sherlock measures out with perfect precision. He refills the water bowl, a natural mineral water that comes in a clear glass bottle that John begrudges every single time.

The cat scarfs it down hungrily, hunched over its bowl, its back rounded and growling deeply when John walks past. He ignores it, just like he ignores Sherlock curled up on the sofa with his back to the room, and grabs his coat, wallet, and phone and leaves the flat.

He eats at the pub that's two blocks away and slowly nurses three pints until it's late enough to reasonably go to bed. He wanders slowly back to the flat and sees the twitch of the curtains and the flash of pale skin. When he reaches the sitting room, however, Sherlock is back on the sofa, the same position as when John left, and John has to try hard not to grin.

“Going to bed,” he says, and doesn't wait for an answer before turning to the stairs and climbing up to the second floor.

It's deliberate, every step even and firmly placed. He reaches the top landing before he hears the querulous cry from downstairs.

“John?”

He doesn't answer, turning the handle and opening the door to the bedroom that he hasn't used in over three years. It's still mostly recognisable, though it's been turned into what is essentially storage. There are boxes of files, all old cases and the things that Sherlock doesn't have room for in his head. At one point John had talked of turning it into Sherlock's lab with the double thought of giving him more room and saving their kitchen table, but Sherlock had gone strangely silent and when John had asked he had shrugged and said it was nothing and that he didn't need John anyway.

John wasn't as clever as Sherlock, but even he had understood that. He had made a point of not smiling, though he had wanted to.

Two days later over breakfast he had casually mentioned how it might be nice to keep the bedroom as it was, in case they ever had someone staying over. John was worried that Sherlock would ask him who they could possibly have staying over because his imagination hadn't supplied him that far, but Sherlock had only looked at him from over top the eggs, an unreadable look on his face, and after a moment had nodded. “Very true,” he'd said, and after that neither of them ever talked about it again.

Now John stares at it, the bed neatly made amidst the boxes. It's strange to think of that wardrobe, once his, standing empty, the drawers that had once contained the broken ends of his life now vacant. He steps into the room and closes the door behind him. The air is closed and stale and he walks to the window, opening it a crack in spite of the chill of the October night that slides in to settle at his feet.

He kicks off his shoes and strips down to his pants and vest, climbing in under the sheets and blankets. He mentally thanks Mrs Hudson for them not being as stale and musty as the room is, and buries himself as far under as he can get. He likes the cold and his old bed is strangely soothing. He hadn't thought of missing it, but suddenly, settled once more in the give of its slightly too soft embrace, he feels oddly safe and deeply content. He almost forgets about the cat and bloody Sherlock, and he is inches away from sleep, listening to the hiss of the night slipping in through the window, when he is jarred awake by the dip in the bed and the sudden coldness against his back as the blankets are raised and Sherlock slides in behind him. A cold nose buries itself against the back of his neck and a cold hand slides over him to cling to his waist, and John finds himself pressing back against that familiar form in spite of himself.

They are silent, though neither of them are asleep. John lies awake, listening to the sound of Sherlock's breath against his ear, smelling the faint cling of cigarette smoke overlaid with toothpaste and shampoo.

“You were smoking,” he says.

“You left,” Sherlock returns against ear.

“I'm sorry.”

There is the barest heartbeat before Sherlock responds. “Me too.”

“We're not naming the cat 'John'.”

Sherlock says nothing.

“Sherlock?”

“He reminds me of you. The way he fights so hard. Even when he was broken and dying he hissed and tried to bite me when I first found him. And he didn't give up, though he knew, I think. And when you left today, he came out and sat on me and started purring and it was...I was happy. And you're the only thing that's ever made me happy.”

John is silent, Sherlock's heat seeping into him, their warmth combining to combat October hovering about on the floorboards below and inching up along the walls. Not for the first time he wonders about this man he's chosen to love. Or no, not even that. This man that he loves, because he can't help it. Because it happened and in spite of everything, in spite of months and years of trying, he couldn't make himself stop. He wonders how someone this extraordinary, this miraculous, could ever be so lost.

“You git,” he says, and he feels the warm huff of shaky laughter against his cheek. “I only went to the shop.”

“That's beside the point. John knew I missed you.”

“You could have come along, you know.”

“I was busy.”

“There you go then.”

John is grinning, a stupid idiot's grin stretched across his face and he has no idea how after all this time Sherlock can still do this to him, make him want to laugh and cry and scream and fly all at once. He presses himself back, finding the perfect warmth of that body, the perfect shape of it, sharp and soft and solid. He threads his fingers through the hand against his waist and feels them curl into his.

Out of nowhere, there is a sound like rocks being tossed in a blender, and the pillow at their heads indents and John feels something warm and solid settling at his head, curling itself around his scalp until his entire skull reverberates with the sound of the cat purring against him.

“Oh my God,” he says, and after a moment. “I think he likes me more.”

Sherlock snorts. “Don't be ridiculous John. John always loves me the most. That's the point.”

John gives a choke of cut off laughter. “Yeah,” he says, and he realises that he's grinning again and he can feel Sherlock's wide smile buried against the back of his neck. “You're probably right.”

 

 


End file.
